Blogging the End of the World™
By Tami Luhby, senior writer13 April 2011 NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — One in six Americans is receiving help from the government, just as fiscal austerity threatens to reduce some of that aid. Soaring unemployment during The Great Recession has driven tens of millions of people to the dole. Enrollment in Medicaid and food stamp programs […]
By Ian Sample, science correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk12 April 201 Radioactive contamination from the Fukushima power plant has been carried around the world and far out to sea, adding to fear and confusion over the danger posed by the leaked material. Japanese officials have taken steps to evacuate residents from five villages outside the exclusion zone around […]
Contact: Mollie Matteson, Conservation AdvocateCenter for Biological Diversity, Northeast Field OfficePO Box 188Richmond, Vermont 05477802-434-2388mmatteson@biologicaldiversity.org In the span of just four winters, a deadly new disease called white-nose syndrome (WNS) that devastates bat populations has spread rapidly across the country from east to west. The bat illness was first documented in a cave in upstate […]
By Lewis Smith12 April 2011 Data released under freedom of information legislation has uncovered what anglers say are “alarming” and “morally indefensible” levels of sea lice infestations at Scottish salmon farms. Official inspections of Scotland’s salmon farms over a two year period recorded 68 cases where levels of sea lice – which can be fatal […]
TOKYO, April 12 (Kyodo) — Japan on Tuesday raised the severity level of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to the maximum 7 on an international scale, up from the current 5 and matching that of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. The previous evaluation of 5 on the International Nuclear Event Scale provisionally […]
…CO2 is rising faster now than it was just a few decades ago. We can even estimate how the rate of increase is changing, by calculating the difference between CO2 concentration each month, and its value 12 months previously, to figure its annual change. Clearly the annual change in CO2 concentration fluctuates. A lot. But […]
Caption by Michon Scott12 April 2011 Monsoon rains fall on Pakistan every summer, but the summer of 2010 was extraordinary. A combination of factors, including La Niña and a strange jet stream pattern, caused devastating floods. The Indus River rapidly rose, and a dam failure in Sindh Province sent part of the river down an […]
By Laura Sanders6 April 2011 SAN FRANCISCO — When faced with a thorny moral dilemma, what people say they would do and what people actually do are two very different things, a new study finds. In a hypothetical scenario, most people said they would never subject another person to a painful electric shock, just to […]
TOKYO, April 11 (Kyodo) – Japan on Monday expanded evacuation areas around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was crippled by the killer earthquake and tsunami a month ago, due to high amounts of cumulative radioactive materials beyond the evacuation zone of a 20-kilometer radius from the plant. The government’s decision comes amid persistent […]
BY SATOSHI OTANI STAFF WRITER10 April 2011 The government plans to prohibit rice planting in fields where the concentration of radioactive cesium exceeds 5,000 becquerels per kilogram of soil. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Friday that the new bans would apply to areas beyond the current 30 kilometer exclusion zone around the stricken Fukushima […]
